Bird flu spreads to another Russian region
The Star, 25 Oct 2005

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Another region in European Russia, Tambov, located 400 km south east of Moscow, has confirmed an outbreak of deadly bird flu virus, a senior regional animal health official said on Monday. 

"Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of the H5N1 strain (of bird flu)... in some dead fowl tissue samples," the official told Reuters. 

He said the disease killed 12 hens at a private dacha in Morshansk district last week, after which local veterinary authorities destroyed 53 ducks and hens remaining in the locality, and imposed a quarantine on it. 

Since breaking out in late 2003 in South Korea, H5N1 has killed more than 60 people in four Asian countries and spread as far west as European Russia, Turkey and Romania, tracking the paths of migratory birds. 

Moscow confirmed last Wednesday an outbreak of H5N1 in the Tula region, some 200 km south of the Russian capital. 

Last week Russia also confirmed bird flu in a village in the Chelyabinsk region in the southern Urals and said it suspected an outbreak of the disease in neighboring Altai region. 

Local media reported last week mass birds death in the southern Russian regions of Stavropol and Rostov but authorities knocked down the reports, saying the deaths were caused by avian diseases other than bird flu.  Russia has been fighting bird flu since mid-July and has killed more than 600,000 domestic fowl.